Never Enough
by CaptureMeIfYouCan
Summary: Orders are to be obeyed. Orders are to be followed. Orders are to be listened to. No questions, no comments, no regrets, no guilt. But not all orders are just orders. Some take lives. Others break hearts. And some do both. Currently being rewritten.


_'Slowly sinking, wasting  
Crumbling like pastries...  
...The worst things in life come free to us  
Cause we're just under the upper hand...  
...It's too cold outside  
For angels to fly  
An angel will die...'_

_~ Ed Sheeran, The A Team_

* * *

_Execute Order 66._

Rex paused, frozen with shock and disbelief as the transmission came through. Then his mind took over. He turned around, placing one hand on each blaster, and walked back in the direction he had come from. Much as he didn't want to, he had to kill his Commander. Others with her power had betrayed the Republic, and he had to be sure she didn't follow suit; and the only way to do that was to kill her.

As Rex walked back into the camp, his men looked up at him. They had received the order, too, he knew, but they had waited for him.

"Sir?" one of them asked.

"I go in alone," Rex growled, "and I kill her alone."

The others nodded. They understood why their Captain would want to be alone. She had always been kind to them, and stuck with them, even through the toughest of missions. She had treated the clones as individuals, as men, and she almost always put their needs in front of hers.

She would go days without sleep, treating the injured. Or go thirsty, having given her water to a clone who was suffering from dehydration. She had been willing to sacrifice herself many times over to save her troops. Yes, Rex's men understood why he wanted to be alone when he pulled the trigger.

"Where is she?" he snarled. Anger and harshness was a good way to hide the conflict inside of him.

"In her tent, resting," Jesse supplied.

Rex nodded once, set his jaw, and walked towards his Commander's tent. She couldn't know something was wrong, or he would never survive the encounter. He came within sight of her tent, and she suddenly popped out, a bright smile lighting up her face.

"Hi, Rexie," she said happily. "I was just coming to look for you."

"Well, I was coming to see you, Commander," Rex said, making sure he kept his voice neutral.

She paused mid-step.

"Oh, okay. We can go talk in my tent."

She turned around to reenter her tent. Now was when she would probably be most vulnerable, Rex knew. Her back was turned, she was relaxed, not yet having picked up on the deaths of her fellow Jedi, and she wasn't expecting it. Rex raised his blaster, and aimed straight at her head.

One shot would do it. She would most likely feel no pain, as death would be instantaneous. There would be a lot of blood, but that would wash away. Rex didn't know what he would do to the body once he killed her, but he would cross that bridge when he got there.

Only a second had passed, and she still had her back to him, doing something busily and chattering happily, oblivious to the fact that her cause of death stood only feet behind her.

Rex raised his second blaster, and pointed it at the center of her back. If the head shot didn't kill her, the second shot to the back would. Granted, it would be more painful, but he would have completed his task.

"I'm sorry, Commander," Rex whispered.

She heard and turned around, drawing her lightsabers a moment too late. The head shot, she was able to deflect, but the shot to her back she was only able to partially dodge. It hit her in the shoulder and she sucked in her breath as the laser shot penetrated into her bone.

Rex paused for a second, but then he pulled the trigger again. Again, she deflected; but she just stood there. Rex expected her to charge at him, but she didn't.

"I can't kill you, Rexie," she whispered. Tears were streaming down her face as she spoke. "But apparently, you can kill me without a second thought."

She turned and ran, her lightsabers positioned to deflect the shots, but not harm Rex or any of the men that had now come and joined him. The shots rained down on her, but she managed to escape with only the shoulder wound. She found a ship and activated it, setting the coordinates for a random place in the Outer Rim.

Now that she was alone, she was assaulted with images of all the other Jedi being turned on by their troops. She watched as Commander Cody shot at her Master Obi-Wan. She watched as her best friend, Barriss Offee, was struck down by Lieutenant Galle. She watched as her father-figure, Plo Koon, was blasted out of the sky by Commander Wolffe. She felt helpless as she watched all her friends and masters get killed by their own troops.

She snapped herself out of the trance she had fallen into, and got up. She searched for, and found, the refresher on the ship. It was a small one, but it was nice for being so small. She showered, hoping to erase all the images of everything she had seen and heard.

Her chest hurt, and she knew it was survivor's guilt mixed with the loss of everyone she had ever cared about. She got out of the refresher, and after a little more searching, found an inflatable mattress. She blew it up, and placed it on the floor of the cockpit. If anything or anyone tried to do something to her ship, she would be near enough to react before any actual damage could be done.

She sank down onto the mattress, the need for sleep hitting her full-force all of a sudden. She wrapped herself in a dusty blanket she had found, and curled up. As she closed her eyes and drifted off into sleep, the only thing she could see was the image of Rex holding the gun to her head, and the only thing she could hear was Rex saying, "_I'm sorry, Commander."_

* * *

_Nine months later…._

She ran around a corner, and vaulted up into the air duct. Her mission had been to hijack the ship containing medical supplies, and drop it off at Kyrimout without anyone, the residents at Kyrimout and the Imperials, noticing. Somewhere along the way, she had tripped an alarm, and now the mission was falling apart.

She crept through the ducts, and then exited them a few floors below where she had been moments ago. The Stormtroopers following her would have no idea where she was, she hoped. She heard more footsteps, and squeezed herself into a crevice in the wall where something had once been stored. She was almost all the way hidden in it, when the footsteps rounded the corner and approached her hiding spot.

She froze. Movement was always detected before actual beings were, she knew, and she hoped that by being still she would be invisible. Tentatively, she reached out her Force senses, and immediately recoiled at the familiarity of the presence walking towards her.

Rex rested one hand on his DC-17, slowing his pace as he approached the intruder. He finally came within sight of the crevice, and he gasped, inaudible to everyone, at the sight of his former Commander trying to hide inside the wall. She looked up into his visor, pain and fear pooling in her blue eyes.

"Rex?" she whispered.

She started to remove herself from the crevice, but Rex's hand gripped his pistol, and she froze again. Her gaze never left his visor as she sought out his honey-colored eyes. She remembered how they had once looked upon her, filled with laughter and brotherly love. She remembered how once, this man would have done anything to protect her.

That man was no longer alive, though. She knew that, and she had the scar on her shoulder to prove it. As soon as Rex had decided to pull the trigger on her, the man she had once loved and cared about had died. He had been replaced by just a clone; someone who would follow orders without question. The someone that would kill her without question.

She wondered if he was even still human. Maybe he had been replaced by metallic bits, piece-by-piece, until finally the person that stood in front of her now was no longer man. No, she would be able to tell. Somewhere, she knew, buried deep inside this man, was the one piece of his conscious that stopped him from pulling the trigger on her right then.

"I miss you, you know," she said quietly.

Rex remained still, not showing any reaction to her words. She swallowed, and felt that time was running out, but she had to say this. He had to know.

"I think about you all the time. I wonder what it would have been like if we had run away together, just you and me."

She paused, feeling for a change in emotion from Rex. There was none, and she continued.

"I remember the times when we would laugh. I remember how much you loved to blow things up, and how much you teased me about it. Do you remember that?"

Again no response. She sighed, but continued.

"I hope that you are happy, whatever it is your doing now. I hope you are living the life you wanted, and that you are content with it."

She wasn't saying it in a sarcastic way; Rex could see the sincerity in her eyes.

"I haven't stopped thinking about the fact that you apologized before you killed me. I remember that, even if you don't. I realized a few months ago that you were going to shoot me in the head. Being shot in the head is painless, and death is instantaneous. You were doing that on purpose. You didn't want me to suffer."

At that, Rex responded. He stepped away from the crevice, giving her room to slide out of her hiding space.

"Go," he said harshly.

It was one word, but it proved to her he was still human enough to have emotions. He was letting her escape without a fight. He was giving her the chance to go and disappear again, like she had nine months ago.

She stared at him a moment longer, memorizing everything about him in that moment. His rigid stance, his harsh voice, his cold gaze through the visor. It was so different from the man she had fallen in love with.

"Thank you, Rex," she paused and then added, at the end of his name, "-ie."

There was no physical response, but Ahsoka could sense longing and sorrow buried somewhere in the clone standing somewhere in front of her. It was so tiny, so frail, that she could barely catch it, but it was there.

That was the one thing she had been searching for all of her months on the run. The man she had once loved, and still did, was still alive, if barely, inside this other man that was giving her the chance to escape.

"Take care of yourself, Rex."

And then she turned and sprinted down the hallway, and into her ship, which she had latched onto the bigger ship. She disconnected her ship from the Imperial ship, and let it drift off into space. They wouldn't detect her, she knew. Rex would be sure they didn't. He wouldn't let her escape only to kill her minutes later.

She watched the fading ship, and finally, some of the ache in her chest eased. The grief she had been feeling for nine long months was starting to disappear. And it had only taken one word: _go._

* * *

_Three months later….._

She hissed in pain as she was hit by a laser shot. It was near the place where Rex had shot at her a year ago.

She felt another shot penetrate her leg, and she almost collapsed from the sudden pain. She limped onward, trying to outrun the Stormtroopers. It was a worthless effort though. They gained on her quickly.

Suddenly, she stopped. Her death was near, she could feel it, but she wasn't scared. She felt that she had lived a good life, even if it was a short one. She would finally be reunited with her friends and family; all the ones that had died loving someone, at least. She had no regrets, except for one.

She wished she had acted sooner on her feelings for Rex. She wished they had been able to run away and establish a family and a new life. But that would never be, and she knew it.

The Stormtroopers paused, suspicious that the Jedi they had been chasing suddenly stopped. They stood in a ready stance, prepared to fire when the signal was given. The Jedi stood still, her back to them. She was a beautiful. Her silhouette was outlined by the red, yellow, and orange of the burning building that she had been running towards. Her orange-ish skin seemed to radiate in the strange light from the fires.

"Shoot me," she called softly, her back still towards them.

They all looked at each other in confusion. This was a first. A Jedi telling them to shoot her.

"I am ready to die," she said to them.

The Stormtroopers stood still for a moment more, and then their Captain gave the command to fire. She didn't flinch or try to move away as the bolts of blue laser struck her squarely in the back. She did try to turn around though.

She had sensed that presence again, and she wanted to see him one last time before she died. She got halfway around before she sank, almost gracefully, onto the ground. Rex walked over and knelt beside her. He saw the light leave her eyes, but not before a small smile lifted the edges of her lips.

He felt for a pulse, double-checking to make sure she was dead before he called it in. He looked up at his men and nodded, confirming she was dead. His men returned the nod, and then turned to return back to the barracks.

Rex lingered by the body of the dead Jedi for a moment more. He knew she was dead, but he had heard stories of spirits that linger with the living for a few moments before they disappear forever. Rex gently closed her eyes, and, after a moment's pause, leaned down and softly placed his lips on her rapidly cooling ones.

It was soft and quick, but it was enough to ease some of the hurt that had clouded Rex's heart and mind since Order 66 had been issued.

He got up, his gaze never straying from the face of the beautiful, dead Jedi that had once loved him. Before he turned to walk away, he opened his mouth, saying the words that had haunted him for so long.

"I love you, too, Ahsoka Tano."


End file.
